Mana occupies a singular position in the depth-psychology corpus as the conceptual bridge between primitive energic experience and the modern psychological category of libido or psychic energy. Jung’s treatment is foundational: drawing on Codrington’s ethnological reports from Melanesia, Lehmann’s classic monograph defining mana as ‘the extraordinarily effective,’ and parallel concepts such as the Sioux wakan, the Australian arunquiltha, and the Malayan badi, Jung argues that mana is not an abstract idea but a ‘representation’ rooted in participatio mystique — a pre-reflective perception of charged relational power inseparable from its object. He reads it as the direct forerunner of the psychological concept of energy, a phenomenal rather than theoretical apprehension of psychic force. Jane Ellen Harrison, approaching from classical scholarship, situates mana within pre-animistic religion, linking it to thunder-rites, taboo, and the sanctity of weapons, while Hubert and Mauss (cited by Jung) propose mana as a foundational cognitive category underlying Western notions of substance and cause. The concept reaches its most developed depth-psychological form in Jung’s elaboration of the ‘mana-personality’ — the archetype of suprahuman power that the ego risks inflating into when it appropriates the energy previously held by the anima or animus. This constellation of usages — ethnological, energic, and archetypal — makes mana one of the most theoretically loaded terms in the library.
mana is not a concept but a representation based on the perception of a ‘phenomenal’ relationship. It is the essence of Levy-Bruhl’s participatio mystique… the primitive view of mana is a forerunner of our concept of psychic energy
Jung establishes mana as the pre-theoretical, representational precursor to the modern concept of psychic energy, rooting it in participatio mystique rather than abstract thought.
, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960thesis
I therefore call such a personality simply the mana-personality. It corresponds to a dominant of the collective unconscious, to an archetype which has taken shape in the human psyche through untold ages of just that kind of experience.
Jung defines the mana-personality as a collective-unconscious archetype embodying suprahuman potency, arising when the ego absorbs the power formerly held by the anima.
, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, 1953thesis
The Melanesian mind is entirely possessed by the belief in a super-natural power or influence, called almost universally mana. This is what works to effect everything which is beyond the power of the ordinary man… It is a power or influence, not physical, and in a way supernatural; but it shows itself in physical force
Codrington’s canonical ethnological description of mana as an impersonal yet personal supernatural power, cited by Jung as the foundational ethnographic datum for his energic theory.
, The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche, 1955thesis
In differentiating the ego from the archetype of the mana-personality one is now forced… to make conscious those contents which are specific of the mana-personality. Historically, the mana-personality is always in possession of the secret name, or of some esoteric knowledge
Jung describes the individuation task of differentiating the ego from the mana-personality archetype as equivalent to a second liberation from the parental imagos.
, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, 1953thesis
the ego never conquered the anima at all and therefore has not acquired the mana. All that has happened is a new adulteration, this time with a figure of the same sex corresponding to the father-imago, and possessed of even greater power.
Jung argues that the ego’s apparent acquisition of mana after ‘conquering’ the anima is illusory — it has merely been seized by the mana-personality archetype.
, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, 1953thesis
If an important psychic component is projected on a human being, he becomes mana, extraordinarily effective—a sorcerer, witch, werewolf, or the like… These projections give the medicine-man his mana
Jung explains that mana is psychologically the result of projected psychic components, giving persons their aura of uncanny power over others.
, Civilization in Transition, 1964thesis
Sometimes it is mana today and tomorrow no longer. It may again be merely a concrete object… As soon as they are mana, the most heterogeneous things are the same, all parts of the divine process.
Jung illustrates the fluctuating, projective character of mana through ethnographic anecdotes, showing how numinosity attaches and detaches from objects according to unconscious dynamics.
, Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1928-1930, 1984supporting
Jung tells us that, when someone succeeds in killing, that is overcoming, the mana of another person… the conqueror then automatically acquires that mana… in accord with the primitive belief that when a man kills the mana-person he assimilates the mana into his own body.
Beebe applies Jung’s mana-transfer principle to a contemporary psychological reading of a cultural narrative, demonstrating mana’s relevance to power dynamics in individuation.
, Energies and Patterns in Psychological Type: The Reservoir of Consciousness, 2017supporting
it is a magic circle drawn around man as a mana figure. Mana figures are always in a way taboo… The mana of man, of the earth, of the tree and so on—life in every form—was represented by the cross and the circle
Jung connects mana figures to mandala symbolism, linking the taboo surrounding numinous persons to the cross-and-circle as a universal representation of concentrated psychic life-force.
, Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1928-1930, 1984supporting
this notion of the ‘sacred’ which we have resolved into the fearful and the effective, and have seen to be the result of man’s emotion projected into external nature, is wide-spread among primitive peoples and has given rise to an instructive terminology.
Harrison situates mana within a pre-animistic stage of religion, defining the sacred as a projection of human emotion — fearful and effective — into external nature.
, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912supporting
the faith that birds and beasts had mana other and sometimes stronger than the mana of man… it is that you participate in a substance full of a special quality or mana.
Harrison traces mana to zoomorphic sanctity and ritual ingestion, arguing that animal mana was participatory rather than theistic, predating the concept of god-animals.
, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912supporting
An examination of the words orenda, mana and Wa-kon’-da has helped us to realize what is… placing of the child ‘in the midst of’ those elements that bring life, health, fruitfulness, success
Harrison aligns mana with cross-cultural cognates — orenda, wakan — as names for the concentrated life-force invoked in rites of passage to situate persons within the field of vital power.
, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912supporting
the notion of mana is one of these principles; it is a datum of language; it is implied in a whole series of judgments and reasonings… it is a category not confined to primitive thought; and today, in a weakened degree, it is still the primal form that certain other categories… have covered over: those of substance, cause
Citing Hubert and Mauss, Jung records the argument that mana is a universal cognitive category underlying Western metaphysical concepts of substance and causality.
, Psychology and Religion: West and East, 1958supporting
They are united with the ancestor’s soul and with the spirits of all those who afterwards possess them… buried among the graves so that they can soak up the mana of the dead. They promote the growth of field-produce, increase the fertility of men and animals
Jung documents churinga stones as repositories of accumulated mana — a cross-cultural example of objects charged with ancestral psychic energy and used for healing.
, Collected Works Volume 3: The Psychogenesis of Mental Disease, 1907supporting
the Mexican Huichols likewise have a fundamental conception of a power that circulates through men, ritual animals and plants… Wakan establishes the connection between the visible and the invisible, between the living and the dead, between the part and the whole of an object.
Jung surveys cross-cultural parallels to mana — wakan, badi, arunquiltha — as evidence of a universal primitive conception of circulating energic power.
, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960supporting
this question of the sanctity of the weapon itself as a vehicle of mana and an extension of man’s personality is important for our adequate understanding of the thunder-cult among the Greeks.
Harrison argues that Greek thunder-cult originates in the weapon as a mana-vehicle, an extension of personal power, not yet personified as a deity’s attribute.
, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912supporting
the gist of tabu and its intimate inextricable relation with mana if we study a certain special form of Greek thunder-cult.
Harrison demonstrates in Greek religious practice the structural interdependence of mana and taboo, where lightning-struck ground becomes ritually unapproachable precisely because it is charged with divine potency.
, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912supporting
Many ‘primitive’ tribes conceive of magico-religious power as ‘burning’ or express it in terms meaning ‘heat,’ ‘burn,’ ‘very hot,’ and the like.
Eliade notes that magico-religious power cognate with mana is widely expressed through thermal metaphors — mystical heat — in shamanic and sorcery traditions.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951aside
the conquest of the anima as an autonomous complex, and her transformation into a function of relationship between the conscious and the unconscious… the anima forfeits the daemonic power of an autonomous complex; she can no longer exercise the power of possession
Jung frames the defeat of the anima as the precondition for the mana-personality problem, the stage immediately preceding the ego’s inflation with archetypal power.
, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, 1953aside